2021-24-02

Welcome

Welcome!

What will I be doing in this course?

  • 5 x article “peer” review reports of an assigned reading = 25%.
  • 10 x class participation + engagement points = 10%.
  • 1 x student led presentation = 10%.
  • 1 x Grant application initial proposal = 15% “application inquiry” – or preliminary plan.
  • 1 x "Grant application final grant = 40%

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What is culture?

We define culture in a broadly to socially transmitted and acquired information information that affects and enables human cognition and behavior. That’s not perfect. For example, its clear that birds, chimps, and other organisms have culture, however, this definition makes a start.

What is evolution?

Why combine culture and evolution?

  1. to clarify otherwise bewildering cultural diversity;
  2. to unlock wisdom in culturally inherited systems;
  3. to avoid to cultural evolved inequality.

Religions prominently display cultural variation

Variation of Warblers

## Warbler Phylogeny

Religion phylogeny

Evolutionary Puzzle 1| cost

Why cost?

Evolutionary Puzzle 2

Religion is ancient

Darwin

It is hardly possible for me even to recall to the reader, who may not be a practical geologist, the facts leading the mind feebly to comprehend the lapse of time … – Charles Darwin, Origins of Species, p.283

Darwin

It strikes me that all our knowledge about the structure of our Earth is very much like what an old hen would know of the hundred-acre field in a corner of which she is scratching. –Charles Darwin, Life and Letters of Charles Darwin vol 2, p.348)

Timeline

Evolutionary Puzzle 3

Growth

New Zealand forcast

Birthrate NZ

Religion in your backyard

Hutt

Petone

Al Noor

Summary

  • Culture and evolution
  • Case of religion
  • Cost Puzzle
  • Endurance Puzzle
  • Ubiquity Puzzle
  • Also, religion is still prominent, and perhaps will be increasingly so.

Help

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